Queen Vic

Leaving Melbourne may have been a bit of a downer but it did not take long for the clouds to break and gold to infiltrate. Golden sunshine, golden fields and golden towns, offering a mix of Victorian Victorian elegance, rich and undulating country and rugged bushland escapes. Land that was built on gold and, on the whole, continues to shine. First up was Castlemaine, with requisite iron latticework and bakery foods; nearby Maldon was even more warm and fuzzy country charm.

With the discovery of huge gold nuggets in the 1850s, towns sprung up in the blink of an eye, and people from all over the world sought their fortune. Very few found it. Those with mining in their blood were particularly keen to try their luck, bringing Chinese camps and Welsh choirs and Cornish pasties. Pasties which survive today but – from my experience at least – are anything but Cornish.
 

Gold also breeds greed and corruption, something which continues to this day. Bushrangers sought infamy. Very few found it. Some linger in obscure markers and place names and tales with tenuous links to events and persons 150 years ago. Like Captain Melville, who may – or may not – have hidden from the law among a series of rocky outcrops and caves now named after him. Based in Kooyora State Park, his potential hangout provided a fine walk and base from which to return to swagging.

 

The King and Queen of gold towns are Ballarat and Bendigo. More on Ballarat later, but Bendigo has an elegance likely unsurpassed in Victorian Victorian towns. It seems its wealth was spent with great discretion and many of the fine buildings remain untainted, its streets are wide and orderly, and the parkland sedate with a tinge of autumn flowing into the majestic oaks and chestnuts. Queen Victoria, whose statue sits among it all, would be amused.

 

Heading west from Bendigo the towns become sparser and vast fields of wheat spread out across the flat landscape. Horsham provides a welcome display of civility and offers the usual services for weary travellers and locals alike, i.e. supermarkets, bakeries and the McDonalds – KFC – Hungry Jacks highway trifecta. Beyond Horsham the South Australian border nears, but it is not time for that just yet. A stop at Natimuk Lake, just west of Horsham provides a chilly night and startling shock that we are now in April, inland, and things are getting colder. But dawn, when it comes, is stately and grand and the early rays of the sun cherished by the skin for their warmth and light.

 

 

 

Around here you can see the landscape clinging on to some kind of pastoral pretence, aware that arid deserts and plains are only a few dry summers away. Little Desert National Park is not the desert you would picture in your head, but a land of white sandy soil from which flourish low scrub bushes and withering Stringybark Gums. Where it meets the wide flow of the Wimmera, mighty River Red Gums testify to the life that can grow so beautifully in this nominal desert.

There are one or two rather large protuberances from these flat plains. One is Mount Arapiles, a rock climber’s dream of bulbous rocks and gnarly fissures. The other is, collectively, The Grampians, a huge range of ridges thrust upwards to form grand balconies and weathered tors, endless valleys filled with Eucalypts and drained by creeks and cascades. One further protuberance nearby suggests at the wildlife within; the Giant Koala another testament to the power and curious attraction of big things in Australia!

The Grampians National Park is without question splendid. In fact, I think the couple of days spent there have been the best of this trip so far. It’s my kind of thing: there are rocks and trees and lookouts and walks and waterfalls and wildlife. There’s also a very generous serving of ice cream in Halls Gap. That helps. As does one of the fine campgrounds, set in the trees with fire pits for warming baked potatoes and sausages and beans.

It’s a popular place, with a large propensity for British tourists, who lurk round every bushy corner and cling to the railings at lookouts like they are clinging on to an ancient archaic institution. Entering the park from the north there are a number of stops to see this curious species. MacKenzie Falls is the first, and it’s great to be one of them again as you happily whizz down the steps to the bottom of the falls and wheeze heartily back up them. Further south, a couple of lookout spots are adorned with people, marvelling at the vastness of the landscape. At Reid Lookout, a couple of rocks protrude out from the ridge line, like balconies overlooking an amphitheatre of gum trees. They are known as The Balconies. Nearby, Boroka Lookout scans the ridgelines plummeting down to Halls Gap and the agricultural plains spilling out eastward. 

 

 

The curious British tourists are not alone in this environment. There are other curious creatures too. Supposedly koalas, though we are currently debating whether they are extinct given our complete lack of success in spotting any anywhere in Victoria, including supposed koala hotspots. Maybe that is a price to pay for seeing the Giant Koala. There was, however, the Tawny Frogmouth Owl, looking all crazy and weird and stuff like these Australian animals have a tendency to. Of course, at the campground were the wallabies and kangaroos – Arthur, Bert, Shirley and Rodrigo, sharing our campfire and eating our grass.

Having previously bemoaned a relative lack of superb walks so far in Australia, The Grampians made amends. Alas, it wasn’t a loop walk and there were some serious signage issues, but the reopened walk up to Mount Rosea gave an ample supply of challenge and reward. Rocks and crevices, steps and gaps required negotiation in a general uphill slog, but all the time there were sweeping views and fascinating formations. I think what you see here, across this landscape, is a place where the classic south east Australian bushland meets the interior. It’s like the Blue Mountains crossed with the Flinders Ranges. It’s utterly unique and captivating and nothing at all like the other Grampians. Apart from the British people milling around of course.

 

 

Completed in the setting of perfect weather, it was a hike that required a little bit of recovery and refreshment. This came of sorts via the very quirky yet effective bush camp shower, an enclosed corrugated shed in which you can add some water to a bucket and let it spray out of a nozzle. Or the easier method, use a bucket and a sponge and some lukewarm water and feel at least that bit cleaner and cooler. And then replenish with a huge slab of cheesecake in Halls Gap, sustenance at least to get you through one final short jaunt through the grandly named and plagiarised Grand Canyon before day is out.

 

 

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And so we come down from the Grampians and in this very less than direct route from Sydney to Perth return south and east, pausing at Mount Buangor State Park in a landscape more familiar with its mountain ash and fern gullies. Here, the last daylight savings camp meal, and concern rising of cooking more frequently in the dark. Thus, the first day of darkness, why not treat yourself to a very good hearty meal in Daylesford, in the wonderful atmosphere of the Farmers Arms Hotel? With crispy pork belly and mash, forget cooking in the dark, and cap it off with a chocolate caramel parfait with salted peanut caramel and chocolate sauce? Why not indeed.

With such treats and a refined setting, captivating as autumn touches the leaves, I could live in Daylesford, though doubt I could afford such a life. Perhaps Ballarat would be cheaper, the king of gold country, where a nugget was found that kicked it all off. I’ve been to Ballarat quite a number of times, being a regional centre in fairly easy reach of Melbourne and conducive to focus group discussions in cheap motel function rooms with boring sandwiches of mild cheese and stinky egg. It grew on me, and visiting this time around, without any work connotations, I was quite enamoured. It offered a lovely day and some time beside the lake and in the Botanic Gardens, a place I had missed on previous trips, but with sculptures and avenues of sequoias and horse chestnuts and fresh glossy conkers to kick around.  And with proximity to Melbourne it delivers good coffee and a decent proportion of young people and life and soul. I could live here, without the boring cheese and stinky egg sandwiches.

We stopped the night in Creswick, another lovely little town in which I could live. In one direction, the services and sights of Ballarat; in the other the endless temptation of eating in Daylesford. In Creswick, a few cafes and shops, a friendly caravan park with enough plugs to recharge phones, lanterns, laptops, batteries, and a series of ponds, placid and fresh in the early morning light.

The new day represented a shift and a sense that we were progressing this journey back in the right direction. Even if this meant initially heading in the wrong direction and ending up within eighty kilometres of Melbourne. Geelong marked a turning point west, and along the coast eventually towards the South Australian border. The waterfront in Geelong was surprisingly sparkling, an antidote to the industrial expectations upon entering the city. It’s amazing what a bit of sunny water, grass and random artwork can achieve.

The water continues to play a strong role as you leave Geelong and head off on the B100, also known as The Great Ocean Road. It’s a drive I’ve done on several occasions previously, but it only felt right to repeat it on this biggest of epic road trips. It takes a while to reach the coast, but once you do, the road clings to the waterline along marvellous sweeps of sand and rugged hills and creeks, at least until Apollo Bay.

On this occasion I didn’t quite make Apollo Bay, veering inland and into the very beautiful, very archetypal lush Victorian landscape of Great Otway National Park. After several weeks in Victoria it was practically the last chance to revel in the greenery of giant ferns, the stature of mountain ash and majesty of beech forest. Everything smells fresh and clean and alluring in these forests, only offset by drop toilets and the shameless scraps of rubbish left behind by ridiculously lazy and hopeless people in an otherwise excellent (and free) campground at Stevensons Falls. As the name suggests, waterfalls dwell here, as they do in a number of other spots – Hopetoun Falls and Triplet Falls also making the itinerary. Given the dry summer and autumn down here so far they are all a pleasant surprise, and all enhanced by good well marked and maintained walking tracks. Hats off to the Great Otway parks people.

 

Rejoining the coast near Princetown it is not long until the Great Ocean Road hits its most touristy and undeniably epic side. The small stretch of coast between here and Port Campbell contains some of the more iconic scenes of the ride, with the Twelve Apostles taking centre stage among many other fine sandstone outcrops and sweeping sandy beaches. Arriving here, the afternoon sun was unforgiving for photos and the many coaches and campers and crowds just a little dispiriting. But the joy of being flexible, of camping nearby, of waking up with the cows and kangaroos, is that you can visit early, when the light is better and the foot traffic lighter. And you can capture those scenes that you have captured before and written about in previous blogs, and then do it all over again!

If there was a little déjà vu around, things beyond Port Campbell were more of a novelty, although London Bridge was still standing and had not, at least, totally fallen down. Warrnambool offered services and good coffee and, again, a positive assessment of whether you could live here. Nearby Tower Hill provided a chance not to see any koalas again, but at least get friendly with some emus. Then, a little further along the coast, Port Fairy gave out enough pleasant charm, fish and chips, and hints of a Cornish landscape to satisfy very much.

 

This is the other Great Ocean Road, where fewer people come and less happens. It’s why it has an allure and appeal, and onward places like Portland strike you as a reasonable spot to potter around or linger longer. We only stopped for an hour or so, but Portland did give us a good cake, a coffee, and a catch up with a very distant but equally close relative and a chance to check ones reflection in his recently polished Harley.
 

I’m not sure if the Great Ocean Road ends at any particular point, but the tarmac continues a little further west now to the border. It’s sparse logging and wind farm country, with the small town of Nelson popping up just before the road becomes South Australian. Here a good campground and easy access to Lower Glenelg National Park, with caves and walks and river gorges and opportunities not to see any koalas as usual. It’s the last Parks Vic site, marking the end of Victoria, a state which is smaller than many others but jam packed in so many ways. From sweeping sand to mountain range, ferny forest to funky city lane, rolling pastoral splendour to haunting barren plain. Bakeries in every town and gold in others. After four weeks here I am tending to agree: Victoria, the place to be.